Google Ranking Philosophy

Today, Google posted (finally) the first in what was promised (two months ago) to be a regular series of posts intended to open up more about aspects of internal operations. The original post was laden with disclaimers to the effect that certain truths could not be revealed due to the nature of their business. Since then, I've been waiting (not alone, I'm sure) to see just how much Google would be willing to share.

Lisa Barone Gets It Right

I'm a bit late on this one. A wonderful family vacation took me away for about 10 days, but I'm back now and, for once, I agree with Lisa Barone.

Lisa's post covering the SMX Advanced : Give It Up Session appropriately took aim at the panel of "experts" who dished out deceptive tactics in the name of SEO. Comic relief is provided by Marty Weintraub who condones taking advantage of link-exchange partners who don't understand NOFOLLOW, and then tries to cover his tracks by saying he's "negotiating the multi-value of a link exchange" in the post comments. Oh, he then blames it on Google by saying they made the rules, not him. I'll point out the obvious here and say that just because somebody else makes the rules doesn't give you license to break them. Let's also remember that the original "rule" (i.e. intent) for NOFOLLOW was to combat blog comment / forum spam, not to decieve link-partners.

Lisa called Marty a jerk but hid it behind a strike-through. I won't. Marty seems like a bit of a jerk to me, too.

Doug Heil swoops in (sorry, Doug, couldn't resist given the mask and cape comments) and attempts to defend the good name of SEO. I, for one, appreciate Doug's straight shooting when it comes to dealing these expert panels.

Anyway, nice work Lisa.